Undeclared Panache

Welcome to the big reveal!! To say that this I was flying by the seat on my pants on this project is an understatement. Six weeks ago, I decided to participate in the One Room Challenge. During previous cycles, I've followed other blogger's journys in renovating and documenting a room in 6 weeks, I've always wanted to play along, and I finally threw my hat in this time, only to be sidelined for the worst reason possible, the loss of my dad. You can read my whole tribute post to my dad here, but he was my inspiration to work my butt off and finish in time for the reveal. Without further adieu, the after, a highly functional garage space that is half studio, half storage, and a home for my Vespa and a one mini VW bus.

Before, the garage, as many are, was a dirty mess. The floors were dirty, the workbench, covered in tools, nothing was organized and storage boxes were stacked on top of each other, instead of neatly placed on a shelf.

My biggest challenge aside from the time constraints, was working with the concrete walls. I foolishly decided to put all my storage on the concrete blocks, leaving right wall free to use as a white backdrop for projects and photos. In order to hang anything on the concrete blocks you need to use lag shields and lag screws. For each screw you need to drill a whole into the concrete, many of them took at least 10 minutes to drill, and I estimate I needed about 46 screws, that's almost 8 hours of just drilling!!

A BIG thank you to Linda at Calling It Home for pulling this all together. And another thank you to Rust-oluem for sponsoring the floor refinishing. And finally to Kathy Davies for the amazing photos! See all the amazing reveals here.

Undeclared Panache

Lauren began Undeclared Panache in 2008 as creative diary, with hopes that others would find inspiration in her everyday musings. She is lover of glitter, vintage clothes, dogs, paper goods, Italy, confetti, pizza and parties. Lauren is a handbag designer by day and moonlights as a blogger, maker and DIY queen to channel her enthusiasm for fashion, interiors, entertaining and more.

Undeclared Panache is an ever-evolving journal of all the lovely things Lauren chronicles from her daily life in the New York City fashion industry.